TIME calls Sony a7R III 'one of the best mirrorless cameras ever made'

The sheer capability of the Sony a7R III is hard to overstate [...] Like the Nikon D850, the a7R III is a camera that you can shoot just about anything with, from landscapes to fast action.

But it seems we weren't the only ones blown away by Sony's newest flagship mirrorless full-frame camera, because TIME just named it one of its Top 10 Gadgets of 2017, and crowned it "one of the best mirrorless cameras ever made."

TIME's Top 10 this year included everything from the DJI Spark to the iPhone X, but the Sony a7R III has the distinction of being the only true-blue camera to make the list. Combine this with the fact that demand for the camera is so high Sony Japan had to issue an apology about pre-order delays, and you see why the Sony shares the top spot in our over $2,000 category for 2017.

To learn more about the Sony a7R III, why people are lavishing the camera with such praise, and what its weaknesses are despite this praise, check out our full review below:

Wow, this is Really an amazing tool. I should deffintelly owe one of this, the features are fascinating! I am a bit currious about the battery life, would it last ling? I think it would be possible to take plenty of lovelly pictures during my next holiday!!! I will go for this. Oh yeahhh

It is very amusing to observe how people get so touchy about the demise ( or not ) of the DSLR.

As a DSLR user, even I can see that it is a technology with a limited lifespan. The writing is on the wall. There is zero logical reason to keep a rapidly moving mechanical mechanism ( which is in itself a hang-over from the film era ) when newer technology is rapidly making it obsolete.

It will not be long before AF is at least as good and maybe better with mirrorless. And it wont be long before EVF are so good you cannot tell the difference between it and real life.

What confuses me is why people are so threatened and generally precious about it? Why care?

I can imagine the complainers are rigid, grumpy men of a certain age who hate ANY change.

As an engineer, it is not hard to see removing the restrictions of a mirror will, eventually, be a universally good thing with NO downsides.

I agree. I'm a very happy Canon dSLR user for many years even I can see the writing on the wall. Mirrorless cameras will one day truly replace dSLR cameras but that is still years down the road.

I do chuckle a bit when I read posts from people that believe that time is now which (for me) is clearly not. Mirrorless is coming, but dSLR is approaching the twilight. Picture quality between the two is close, but Mirrorless still has some maturing to do and outside of picture quality, battery-longevity is paramount for me as an underwater photographer and mirrorless is not even in the same league in that area compared to dSLRs.

I think this new Sony camera is amazing. It's not for many of us but it is really exciting to see how competitive this field is becoming.

I for one will wait to see what the established players that are Canon and Nikon will come out with that will compete directly with Sony's offerings before I make that choice. The next 2-3 years will be quite exciting!

This is a meaningless statement by Time, and not noteworthy enough to mention. Mirrorless cameras are improving all the time, so you could make this statement about any of them really. And "one of the best" is not definitive at all. One of the ten best? One of the fifty best? It doesn't narrow it down much.

The article does go on to describe how cool the camera is, and I think that is the intended take away, not the tag line.

I'm ordering one because the A7r2's sensor is fantastic, but that camera is hopeless at tracking wildlife. 10fps with better autofocus will be really fun for that.

Sony has done a lot with the A Series cameras. But one thing they’ve never done is make it a camera I want to hold. It’s sharp edged, boxy, and unattractive. It doesn’t make me want to pick it up, get to know it, fondle it, use it, or try to make it an extension of my eye.

Back in the film days, I felt very much the same way about Olympus’ OM system. I didn’t like the designs. They felt strange and unintuitive in my hands. It always seemed like they were trying to look professional with their designs, but few pros actually used them. I feel that way about the Sony A series too. Call me a design snob, but an object’s form and function are intimately linked and have the power to inspire.

Sonys are certainly not ugly cameras. Plain looking but certainly not ugly. Finding inspiration from the look and feel of the camera is certainly a subjective thing. I personally would rather draw my motivation to shoot a bit more through my subjects rather then my gear.

Geez, some people will use any excuse for not being able to do good photography, haha. "My camera doesn't inspire me. It's my camera's fault!"

Seriously though, I do agree that it's nice for a camera to look appealing to you. But that's so subjective. For example, I own two cameras that have two totally different effects on me. One is the Fuji X-E1, the other is the Sony A6000. Both are corner-viewfinder cameras. I love holding and looking at my X-E1 more. I find it a lot more attractive. But I shoot more with my A6000. With the A6000, I forget about the camera and it becomes just a shooting tool to capture what's in front of the lens. Both offer a different "flavor" of shooting experience. But I don't expect either camera to "inspire" me to take photos. My inspiration comes from me looking at the world, not me looking at my camera.

Very interesting was the Time-Lapse Video from Drew Geraci in the (Sony-) sponsored article from today. Not mentioning that the "House of Cards"-Intro was entirely shot on Canon 5D Mark II and Mark III.In fact, yes the technology goes further, but since 4 or5 years anything available is good to make such great productions. Even Hollywood-series. Buying the most recent fancy gear is not needed... as Drew showed very nicely.

Yeah, well people said the same thing about Canon when they introduced the EOS system.

The Sony system is growing bit by bit, every month. Right now the Sony FF system consists of 22 FE lenses (not including third-party lenses) and 8 FF bodies. I'm pretty sure that constitutes a system. Can more lenses and bodies be added? Sure. And they certainly will be. But as it is now, it is certainly a system that can meet the needs of an overwhelming majority of shooters.

Frankly, I look forward to a day when we can get away from closed "systems", which is why I think smart adapters are such a great development.

If you are trying to say that you can't make revenue using a Sony system, you are a fool. In fact, name one group besides telephoto sports shooters and perhaps those few tilt-shift shooters who are not fully served by Sony. And next year, your sports shooter argument will disappear.

Not surprising, since it doesn't actually specialize in digital photography. One would not expect TIME to be able to understand that the a7RIII has AWFUL handling when proper (but huge) lenses, such as the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 are attached. I handled that exact setup today, and I couldn't believe how bad it was, meaning the grip is mandatory, which totally changes the whole equation. Try for yourself and you will see what I mean. Anyway, that's why we come here, and not TIME, right? Lol.

@ Jan Chelminski: Why not hold the camera and the lens like they were designed to be held already in the early days of SLR cameras? Then any lens will balance well, no matter small, large or very large and heavy, like the 100-400 mm zoom lens!

My guesss: Time photographers do know as much about photography both as a technique and a medium as other photographers, and Time covers are excellent photography!

Trump was secretly but unanimously voted Entity of all Existence. Jesus graciously recused himself so that there would be consensus. Trump demanded a recount though, he felt that the votes were rigged because only 121.93% voted for him.

Time's 'person of the year' has nothing to do with how great a person in, rather the news worthiness of a person. It would be hard to argue that Obama or especially Trump haven't made a lot of headlines. In 1938 Hitler was chosen as Time's person of the year.

Kind of interesting to see Sony's turnaround. When I first discovered this forum Sony was the DPR whipping boy. Countless posts about stripped out features and many predictions about Sony's demise in the camera business. The only concern I have now is that all this adulation about E mount cameras will even further reduce Sony's minimal commitment to its A mount - which I use and like.

...what a cop-out. Of course the A7R3 is "one of" the best mirrorless cameras ever made. Because Sony has been barely trickling out important things like battery life, robust build quality, or dual card slots. Only because Sony has been frantically throwing new cameras out, with their latest attempt at on-sensor autofocus, which until the mk2 series was a total joke, and until the mk3 / A9 was still barely passable for pros.

So yeah, the A7R3 and the A9 are two of the best mirrorless ILC's ever made. Only because they're two of the newest mirrorless ILC's ever made, and only because their larger sensors give them a slight advantage in envelope-pushing conditions compared to the likes of a Fuji 1.5x or Olympus 2X crop sensor.

Honestly, I find it far more impressive that Nikon did what they did with the D850. The DSLR market is mature and full, yet Nikon managed to deliver a camera so hot that it's still probably got plenty of "sold out" left in it...

I am personally a bit concerned what some unsdisclosed "independent" camera forum mods have reported that unsdisclosed manufacturers seem to have taken some guerrilla tactics for their marketing. These being paid reviews, "questionable" system swap reasonings by bloggers/vloggers, and using troll account factories to bash competitors, and praise own models.

The fanboyism is not helping in this either.

I make my own judgements by getting the cameras in my own hands. After technical specs, the rest of the things in cameras are mostly subjective depending on your shooting style, hand size, and brain logic.

Let's see...latest flagship product of a company specializing in mirrorless cameras. And if you formulate "one of" you have additional uncertainty wiggle room and can't be wrong. Thank you Capt. Obvious.

Thing of it is, water isn't wet however. Wetness is a description of ones experience with water; This happens to us when we come into contact with water in such a way that it impinges on our state of being. We, or our possessions, 'get wet'.

Please go into what Time's "person of the year" really is about - not neccessary being great and noble. The Time front page picture had clear references to a childish narcissist, lack of power, and a person who treads women bad! Time even have had Adolf Hitler as "person of the year"! The front page portrait is a very good piece of work, and nothing for Trump to be proud about!

Mark K, D850...is likely the best DSLR to date, I would also say it beats the "best" mirrorless. Medium format digital still has it beat though, for image quality in certain applications (landscape, large prints..)

Exactly! TIME is an ancient, outdated museum artifact that serves as a horrible reminder of what life was like before the internet. It is completely irrelevant and will very soon cease to exist because circulation and profits are declining, because NOBODY cares about what they say. A random ant in my house has more relevancy and significance than what TIME magazine things or says.

@Markie. Why on earth would you wish bankruptcy on a magazine and the resulting unemploymancy of everyone who works for them along with the finanaical hit to all of the business which support the magazine? You sound like a bad person.

Would that be solid journalism with actual negative consequences for printing lies? A time when major outlets like Time weren't all owned by six giant Corporations, and when even the bigger ones (like Time-Warner) were held to actual standards of accuracy and fairness? Oh wait, going back a little farther, wasn't there a "fairness doctrine?" Back then, they wouldn't have played 28 minutes of tRump's empty podium while intentionally ignoring the Bernie Sanders rallies which doubled the capacity of every venue.

Time is still around because it's a reminder of what once was-we used to have real journalism in this country, and not just in the margins. What passes for "news" today is why enough people think Clinton would be such a bad President as to place what we have now into office. Or for that matter.. the fervent belief that Sanders wouldn't have beaten tRump soundly, or why he was never really given the chance.

An orthodontist in some suburb sees the TIME D850 article and plonks down the big bucks for one at B&H. He takes it on a two week European vacation, but ends up using his wife's ZS100 most of the time, because it's just so much lighter, and does a good enough job. The D850 spends the next 6 years in the guest bedroom closet. Then, on a sad and tragic sunny spring Sunday morning, he has a massive coronary playing tennis. Soon after, the wife decides to sell the house and move to Boca. Her daughter helps out. The daughter knows very little about photography. It's too big, and all her friends own and use descendants of the far more vogue Canon M100. She puts the D850 up for sale on eBay. She creates a no-reserve six-day auction for it which ends at 3:43am on a Tuesday. The auction pictures are kind of dark and blurry. She describes it as a big, old Nikon camera. Interested bidders have to email her to find out the shutter count. It is 1,275. Do you place a bid?

I've shoot with it today. It is THE best Sony's camera including A9 (which I also tried today, it was a special SONY club event). A7RIII is veeery impressive, and it even has the best ergonomics of all E cameras. ALMOST good grip at last, lol!

BUT I was told by a man close to SONY that an even more impressive, even fantastic camera is coming, and it will be called A7SIII.

Impressive camera and well deserved. I don't know about you, but when I need information on cameras, the first place I look is Time magazine. And by the way DPR, why does the fact that Sony is backordered make this a better camera than it would be if they had made more of them?

Why the mirroless moniker, almost sounds like a caveat. How about one of the best CAMERAS ever made period? ...and with 3rd party adapted lenses, one of the most versatile, if not THE most versatile camera ever made ;)

I suspect that had Time chosen the D850 as “one of the best cameras” you would be asking why they didn’t say “one of the best DSLRs” so then the Sony could be recognized as “one of the best mirrorless cameras”.

I dont consider ‘mirrorless’ to be any more of a caveat than I do ‘DSLR’.

so what? To make the list of best mirrorless cameras, you just have to keep up with technology! This said, it is obviously a very good camera. Had I not been a Nikon systems invested guy, I would surely have considered this camera. They are now coming to the same usability level that the top DSLRs have and the have some real advantages.

A camera is listed in a list of "gadgets". Well it means TIME is not seeing Sony a7R III as a professional equipment but as a flaunting device ..( if one looks at the list all products are for flaunting only )

RIght. First digital camera.... as an excercise in tech and gadgetry more than something brought to market. In TV studios everywhere... sure. $80,000 studio camera that never got any press as a consumer item.

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